On 24 October 1944, Vice Admiral Jesse Oldendorf’s Task Force 77.2, the 7th Fleet Support Force, i.e “MacArthur’s Navy”, fired its last few high explosive shells at Japanese positions on Leyte and then steamed south. A sharp eyed observer on a PBY flying boat spotted Japanese battleships in the Sulu Sea off the Philippine island of Negros. The only place Admiral Nishimura could enter the Leyte Gulf was the Surigao Strait, and Oldendorf planned on meeting him there.

Oldendorf’s battleships were, no pun intended, old. They were all commissioned during the First World War and they were the backbone of the US Navy prior to World War Two. They were the centerpiece of War Plan Orange, America’s interwar contingency plan in case of hostilities with Japan. War Plan Orange was scrapped after Pearl Harbor because the Japanese targeted these battleships to deadly effect: The West Virginia and California were sunk, and the Maryland, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania were badly damaged. Only the Wisconsin escaped damage that day. For the next six months, maintenance, recovery, and salvage crews worked frantically to get them battle ready as the carriers held the line at Coral Sea and Midway. Once America counterattacked, the carriers were now the premier platform of sea power, but the big, slow, resurrected battleships of Battleship Row found their place again: this time as mobile fire support platforms.

Oldendorf’s battleships shelled every island the marines or soldiers landed on for the last two years, from Guadalcanal to Leyte. But they had never fired their armored piercing shells in anger. In the early morning of 25 October 1944, they would.

At 0200, Nishimura’s Southern Force of two battleships, six cruisers and ten destroyers slipped into the confined waters of the Surigao Strait. For the next two hours, 32 American PT boats harassed the formation causing much confusion. Then, in a prelude to what would happen the next day, Oldendorf’s destroyers made torpedo runs that disoriented the Japanese formation and destroyed the battleship Fuso. The Fuso didn’t sink… but she broke in half and the two pieces floated around the strait for two days, burning. When Nishimura exited the Surigao Strait into the Leyte Gulf, Oldendorf and his old battlewagons were waiting. Nishimura’s “T” was crossed in a fashion that would have made Lord Nelson proud. Oldendorf’s six battleships and four cruisers pummeled Nishimura’s remaining ships. None escaped. It was the last time in history battleships would fire their guns at another ship. It was the end of an era.

Just west of the San Bernardino Strait off the island of Samar, Rear Admiral Thomas Sprague’s Task Force 77.4 Escort Carrier Group prepared for another day in support of the soldiers and guerrillas fighting the Japanese on Leyte. On the USS Gambier Bay, the USS St Lo and the four other small escort carriers of Rear Admiral Ziggy Sprague’s (No relation) Task Force 77.4.3, “Taffy 3”, the crews readied their aircraft for close air support of MacArthur: attaching rockets, napalm canisters, fragmentation bombs, and even some canisters filled with leaflets that a PSYOP officer needed dropped. The crews of the USS Hoel, USS Johnston, USS Samuel B Roberts, and Sprague’s other destroyers and destroyer escorts huddled around their radios listening to “The Big Game” going on between the battleships.

It seemed the naval Battle of Leyte Gulf was over. It was time to get on with MacArthur’s land Battle of Leyte. Taffy 3’s escort carriers launched their first close air support missions at dawn.

Thirty miles to the west, Adm Kurita’s massive Center Force of four battleships, eight cruisers and eleven destroyers slipped unimpeded through the San Bernardino Strait separating the big island of Luzon and the island of Samar. As Adm Kurita looked east into the rising sun, he thought he saw Halsey’s six fleet carriers, three battleships and four cruisers of TF 38. He actually saw the six jeep carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts of Ziggy Sprague’s Taffy 3.

Kurita immediately ordered the mighty Yamato, and the rest of the Center Force, to attack.

On 28 November 1941, Vice Admiral William “Bull” Halsey departed Pearl Harbor on the USS Enterprise to ferry Marine fighter squadron VMF-211 to Wake Island. Sitting in the office with the Commander Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC) Adm Husband E Kimmel that morning, he asked about the Rules of Engagement if he should encounter Japanese forces.

Halsey: If I run into a Jap ship, how far can I go?

Kimmel: Use your common sense…

Halsey: That’s the best damn order I’ve ever received.

For nearly 18 months, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto the commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet fought the Japanese Army and the Imperial Naval General Staff on the need to strike Pearl Harbor at the outset of war with America. The General staff wanted the fleet carriers for operations in the south, but Yamamoto knew everything depended on the Pacific Fleet being neutralized. At one point the Pearl Harbor operation was only approved when Yamamoto, his staff, and all of his senior commanders threatened to resign. The entire time was spent planning, politicking, and solving the numerous technical problems involved in striking the American Pacific Fleet in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor in far off Hawaii. But on 26 November 1941, the hard work passed into the hands of the operation’s commander, Japan’s premier carrier admiral Vice Admiral Chiuchi Nagumo, when the Kido Butai secretly departed Hittokapu Bay in the Kurile Islands for the long journey east.

The Kido Butai, the “mobile strike force” of the Imperial Japanese Navy, was the most powerful naval fleet ever seen in history up to that point. It consisted of three of the five Japanese carrier divisions, and all of Japan’s big fleet carriers. These carriers: the Kaga, Akagi, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku, could together put the 414 modern fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo/level bombers of the 1st Air Fleet into a devastating first strike. Additionally every plane was superior to anything comparable flown by the Americans. This massive strike force was further escorted by two battleships, three cruisers, nine destroyers, eight tankers, and 23 submarines. Finally, the Kido Butai carried four midget submarines for penetrating the tight defense of the harbor entrance.

The trip would take ten days. They were scheduled to arrive at the launch point just north of the Hawaiian Islands on the morning of 7 December, 1941.

“The Auch”, the Commander Middle East Gen Claude Auchinleck, was having none of it – the Eighth Army would attack until the last British soldier physically couldn’t, despite what its commander thought. When he appointed Cunningham to lead the Eighth Army, he thought he was solid, if unimaginative. He didn’t think he would crack after one bad day. Auchinleck didn’t trust the Operation Crusader reports reaching him in Cairo, so decided to see for himself. Fortunately he did because when he arrived, Cunningham was about to withdraw the Eighth Army back to Egypt.

Over his dead body: Auchinleck spent months preparing for this offensive. He hoarded supplies and practically beggared himself kissing American ass for weapons and tanks. And he took a huge political gamble with Churchill waiting until November. He wasn’t going to waste all that effort, not to mention the lives of his men who died in the last week, just because their commander lost his nerve.

Cunningham had to go, but he would wait until after the offensive was over out of respect for Cunningham’s elder brother, the commander of the Mediterranean Fleet. Despite the loss of three brigades and 300 tanks the day before, the British still outnumbered Rommel two to one in tanks, three to one in infantry, five to one in artillery, and most importantly the supplies and fuel to continue fighting for at least another month.

Auchinleck knew Rommel’s weak point was fuel. Math didn’t lie: at the tail end of a 500 mile supply line, the Germans and Italians couldn’t have more than ten days of petrol for offensive operations. This was even confirmed, via Ultra, when it was found that Rommel was so desperate for fuel that German U boats were screening fast Italian cruisers from Italy to Benghazi, filled not with fuel oil for naval operations but with petrol for the Afrika Korps. Every minute the Eighth Army continued to fight, was one minute closer to Rommel’s inevitable retreat.

This unfortunate fact was not lost on Rommel. He planned to have enough fuel in mid November to capture Tobruk, no more. He wasn’t expecting to throw back a major offensive, much less advance into Egypt. But now that opportunity had shown itself.

After the Afrika Korps’ victory on Totensonntag, Cruell wanted to advance just far enough to consolidate the battlefield and secure all the “wonderful loot” abandoned by the Eighth Army – tanks, trucks, food, water, ammunition etc. But Rommel knew he needed to keep pounding on the British weak point: it’s leadership. He needed to break Cunningham before his own fuel situation broke. (He did, but wasn’t counting on the Auch personally taking over command from Cunningham) The only way he could do that was to attack: one last big push before logistics forced him to withdraw closer to his depots near Benghazi on the far side of Cyrenaica.

On 25 November 1941, Rommel ordered the entire Panzerarmee Afrika on the offensive. The plan was essentially Operation Crusader in reverse: Their objectives were relieving the cut off Italian garrison at Bardia, destruction or capture of any British armor they found, and the capture of any Eighth Army supply dumps. The dumps had to be near the Egyptian frontier, which was marked by enormous amounts of barbed wire. (With any deliberate offensive preparation, the attacking unit always pre-positions supplies as far forward as possible. This mitigates the increasing distance the convoys travel to the forward elements as they advanced. For Crusader that meant near the frontier with Libya, which is exactly where they were.)

When Auchinleck woke that day in the Eighth Army HQ at Magdalena, effectively if not officially taking command of the Eighth Army himself, he received the first reports of panzers slashing through the seam between the XIII and XXX Corps.

Rommel’s “Dash to the Wire” was on.